Vikings Expected To Decline QB Teddy Bridgewater’s Fifth-Year Option

Adam Schefter of ESPN, citing league sources, reports that the Vikings are unlikely to pick up QB Teddy Bridgewater’s fifth-year option before next week’s deadline.

“The injury guarantee makes it tough to do,” said one source tells Schefter.

Even so, Schefter says that Minnesota could still attempt to re-sign Bridgewater.

The fifth-year option would have cost the Vikings $12,198,000 million for the 2018 season, according to Joel Corry, but was guaranteed only for injury and wouldn’t have prevented them from working on a long-term extension over the next year.

Bridgewater, unfortunately, suffered a very serious knee injury right before the start of the 2016 season and subsequently spent the entire year on injured reserve.

The Vikings elected to trade for Sam Bradford shortly after Bridgewater suffered his knee injury, and they clearly plan to have Bradford under center for the 2017 season.

Bridgewater, 24, is a former first-round pick of the Vikings back in 2014. He’s currently in the final year of his four-year, $6,849,502 rookie contract and stands to make a base salary of $1,354,023 for the 2017 season.

In 2015, Bridgewater appeared in all 16 games for the Vikings and threw for 3,231 yards while completing 65.3 percent of his passes to go along with 14 touchdowns and nine interceptions.